The UK is responsible for like 1/3 of the world's inventions of the 19th century.
And I'll just make this up and say America was responsible for 2/3 of the world's inventions of the 21st century. :magus:
And 52.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.
On topic ... yeah, this is a retarded invention.
no matter how important something might be (ie. a giant meteor is in the sky and threatening the planet) you can always just stop in at the Golden Saucer and gamble on some dodos running around a track.